At least 25,000 people want the U.S. government to build a full-size version of the Death Star, preferably seedless.
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Isn't it about time the White House had a distraction from the fiscal cliff (whatever that is)? How about the feasibility of building a real-world Death Star?

As of today, a petition calling for the government of the United States to begin construction on a Death Star by 2016 has more than 25,000 signatures on the administration's official public suggestion page, surpassing the threshold that triggers a required response from the White House.

The petition hit the mark today, just a day before reaching its 30-day expiration date. Conveniently, petition creator "John D." of Longmont, Colo., even provided some politician-friendly talking points to promote the idea:

By focusing our defense resources into a space-superiority platform and weapon system such as a Death Star, the government can spur job creation in the fields of construction, engineering, space exploration, and more, and strengthen our national defense.

Indeed, and since it would take 800,000 years to produce the amount of steel needed for a Death Star, we won't have to worry about unemployment rates for the next several epochs.

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But despite all the common sense arguments in favor of building a moon-size mega-weapon, the petition is about as likely to gain political traction as some of the other popular suggestions on the White House site, which include allowing Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina to secede; impeaching the president; and deporting "everyone who signed a petition to withdraw their state from the United States of America."

Wow, one of those might actually be even more awesome than the Death Star petition.

About the author

Crave freelancer Eric Mack is a writer, radio producer, and podcaster based in Taos, N.M., but he lives in Google+. He's also managing editor of Crowdsourcing.org and has written e-books on both Alaska and Android. E-mail Eric.
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